Thursday, May 1, 2014

The Color Yellow

Yellow is bright and light.
It is cheerful! It reminds me
of spring’s newest leaves, fuzzy chicks, and bright sunshine. Yellow is a delicate color that can easily be
used to create a beautiful journal page. Since there
are warm yellows and cool yellows, I like to do lots of color studies mixing my different yellows with other colors on my palette. A colorful wash of yellows (Quinacridone gold, nickel azo, Hansa yellows...) is a great way to start a
journal page. It is easy to paint on top of yellows creating a variety of blues, greens, reds and oranges. It works with leaves, flowers, trees, as well as buildings. Here is how I used yellow as a starting color for my watercolor journal page: Orvieto, Italy Flower Market Day.
A word of caution -Yellow can quickly get muddy if over-mixed or if added to its compliment - purple.

I started with a mix of warm and cool yellows and let them mingle on my journal page

Here I have drawn in my sketch and started adding more color.

I continue to add color and now some darks.

I add more defined shapes

Final Journal Page

The last day of each month we have a slide show of the Sketchbook
Challenge Flickr group's work for that month's theme. To have your work in the
slideshow at the end of this month, be sure to tag it on flickr with may482.